The picture says it all. Hard to fly with no juice. This Align unit was purchased new for my Fury 55 in March. Has 4 to 6 gallons through it.

Anyone else have this type of failure?

I wonder about a hot glue encasement to support the connections?

I know there are those that will just chalk it up to Align but it is a darned convenient unit. I have them on all my nitro helis and will probably stick with them but it does give you pause for thought.

I had it happen on the ground. Thankfully. But only after the heli was left sitting for months.

I have nerves of steel but thumbs of jelly!

I also use the Align 2 in 1 but haven't had any problems yet. It is a very convenient device indeed. Seems like a poor design not to have any strain relief at the soldier joints of such a critical component.

Search for 2 in 1 failures, there is a long history. Won't go anywhere near them.

I have used several of them and other than that little switch, which only failed on one of my regs, I have had no problems.

Simple fix. Just solder all three contacts together and insert a standard switch between the battery and reg. I have this on my 600 and it works perfectly. I have two years and over 600 flights on my 600N.

2-1 is what brought my Raptor 30 down last week. I guess early one have a problem with the contacts inside of the switch, a local guy here in MI sent me a vid of his switch and while he had it powered up he was flicking it you can see the LED's turning on and off.

Its better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.. Raptor 30 and 90SE

Yep, got one on my bench that only had five flights on it before it failed. Any one want one, Cheep.

If the wings are traveling faster than the fuselage, it's probably a helicopter.

I cant really dog on it too bad cause Ive had it on my 30 for at least a year with no problems until last week when it decided to shut off. Just scares me a little cause I have one on my 90SE that I havent maidened yet

Its better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.. Raptor 30 and 90SE

I have had fiarly good luck with the 3 I am running. One is from when they first added the case. The main issue i have had was with the wire breaking near the solder join for my deans connector. Also once i had to dry out the switch on a very foggy morning.

Its better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.. Raptor 30 and 90SE

I always notice that people put the switch down on the right side frame, precisely where they tell you to or near the tank, but this is where you get the most spray from the fuel and oil. I say this after seeing so many covered in fuel/oil residue.
At our field, I copied what some of the local guys here did, and I put the switch on-top of the pitch servo box just in front of the main shaft on my T-Rex700.
Here it is hidden by the canopy to protect it as much as possible from the fuel and oil spray, yet it's easy to get at with your fingers without having to remove the canopy to turn on and hit the glow button. I have had no problems with mine for nearly a year now, and have noticed I get no oil or fuel residue sprayed onto it. The unit still looks brand new like the day it was installed. Clean and dry.
Just something for people to try out in an effort to help, but I have to agree with some comments here, the solder joints did not fail as this failure seems to be due to vibration as it broke the three tabs off. Some glue might have helped but with the fuel/oil coverage these units get in the areas people put them, I don't think it would help as the glue would soften up possibly due to the heat of the chemicals falling on it. Try moving your switches to where I have indicated and notice how much cleaner and drier your switches will be from then on.

I will not jeopardize my 1 grand bird on this little cheap device. A lot of people said thay have no problem with it with many flights, but I am sure just one single bad incident will make them start whining the other way.

Its better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.. Raptor 30 and 90SE

How bad are the high-frequency vibrations in that heli of yours?

DKSHEMA

I have no way to measure the vibration except by eye. It is a very smooth running helicopter as helicopters go. No tail wag nothing. It was the three metal tabs that failed not the solder joints. It is a vibration failure but helicopters will do that.

I will not jeopardize my 1 grand bird on this little cheap device.

RUDYY
The other side of that coin is that I have caught batteries going bad by the constant battery condition readout on the 2 in 1. Whether that saved a crash or not is hard to say. Hopefully I would have caught the issue while charging / maintaining but the first clue I got was from the 2 in 1.

I always notice that people put the switch down on the right side frame, precisely where they tell you to or near the tank, but this is where you get the most spray from the fuel and oil. I say this after seeing so many covered in fuel/oil residue.

RRIOS

Good idea, although I like to be able to see the condition lights in flight. This failure was not oil related. No oil had pentrated the case and it was the mounting tabs themselves that broke. I think the switch is fine.

Stuff does break. I burned 44 gallons of fuel through helicopters last year and all of them have a 2 in 1 on them with no other issues and in fact as I said on at least three occasions it has tipped me off to a battery going bad.

Has anyone tried mounting these with gyro tape? The servo tape I have been using doesn't really offer any isolation from vibration. Maybe even velcro pads, HMMM. Maybe I just answered my own question on how to prevent this in the future.

I had one of mine fail on my 700 a couple weeks ago after a crash. The ground wire was knocked off on the regulator PCB. It was shocking that the crash could knock the wire off. After I opened up the regulator and looked inside I could see why. There is nothing mechanical holding the wires in place and the solder pads were small with some very strange cold solder joints. I had a hard time to re-melt the factory solder and re-connect the wires. In the end I removed the factory solder and added my own.

I'm not sure what type of solder it was but it was no good at all. Very concerning that the wires attached to the regulator are not strain relieved in any way except the rubber boot.

By the way the 700 crash was due to me being dumb and using the 3G servo disks labeled J on Hitech servos. They were very tight on the bench but slipped during hard ticktocks. The new servo disks labeled H that I bought were so sloppy I didn't even try to fly with them.